


To Know and To Do

by AriesDraco



Category: Deadpool (Movieverse)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Deadpool 2 - Freeform, Gen, I can't tag shit, Maybe pre-slash if you squint, fuck it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2019-05-12 23:18:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14737686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AriesDraco/pseuds/AriesDraco
Summary: Just a little introspective piece set around where Cable makes the decision to make use of the lead token. Because it won't leave my head.





	To Know and To Do

He should have known better.

He could rationalise his decisions all he wanted, but, the fact was, he should have known better. He should never have made the jump, not this far back into the past. They all believed him, that this was all part of the plan, never questioning why he’d had to go this far back. He wouldn’t have had an answer for them if they had asked; he hadn’t realised at that time. He should have known better.

(Their bodies in cinders, the floor still warm, the smell of charred flesh burning his throat, a future that never happened, that will never happen, the memories as fresh as an open wound, from mere days ago.)

He’d run.

He should have known better, but he’d run, run far, far away from that moment, as if it would have given him some distance when the moment was already burned (burned) into his mind. He should have known better. He should have known that time was no time at all. They could be dozens of years apart and it would only have been minutes.

He’d gotten lucky, though by any other measure it would have appeared otherwise. He’d failed the assassination, his efforts confounded by the clown in the red body condom, again and again. That fuckface with the fucked-up face who’d even dared claim that he cared nothing for the boy, as if he was merely fucking up the plan for the sake of fucking up the plan, when he was clearly fighting as hard as he could for said boy…

No. That was sentiment talking. He wanted to believe that fuckface babyballs was better than he really was, because he was just familiar enough to be achingly different, because for him, in spite of all they’d done to fix it, when he closes his eyes, he sees his wife and daughter in ashes on the floor.

He’d gotten lucky because if he hadn’t run into this roadblock with the face of rotten roadkill, he would have succeeded. And gone home having taken revenge for something that never happened and never would happen. Because that was what this was. It never was just a mission to undo what was done. It never occurred to him that there were non-lethal ways to stop the boy, because he hadn’t cared to consider the option. Because he’d wanted Firefist to die in fear and pain, knowing that…

What? That he was someday going to grow up bad and make a mistake so terrible that he would never grow up?

He’d gotten lucky, running into Deadpool, though most people wouldn’t see it that way. It was only when he’d pulled the trigger and the future changed that he’d recognised his own mind, recognised the cold truth that he’d ignored, the truth that had sent him decades into the past seeking more time. The future had been undone, but he could still smell it, still see it, still feel the ash crumbling in his fingers, the warmth of the floor. He would have gone home with it, the smell, the sight, the ash, the warmth.

Instead, the boy had been saved, his family had been saved, hundreds of lives had been saved, and he got to watch the person who’d saved him slowly slip away. The smell of blood, of dust and burning in the air, a body, covered in grey ash, still singing to cheer up those around him.

He could have gone home, wreathed in ash and smoke, to his wife and daughter who wouldn’t know that he’d ever been gone, because time was no time at all when you could slide through it. Of all that happened and never happened, and never would happen, only he would know.

In the long minutes it took for Deadpool to die, the decision coalesced, heavy with inevitability, and he reasoned. He reasoned that he wouldn’t be missed, because if he ever found a different way home, he would know exactly when to slide himself. He reasoned that his family was now/will be fine, because of this irritating, incorrigible man. He reasoned that having been saved and having the ability to save the one who saved him, there was only one right thing to do.

He reasoned that if he was going to have to bear the pain, he might as well take all of it.

He was wrong, of course, but at least in that point in time, he felt for a moment at peace.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm really fond of this version of Cable, but boy is he going to be pissed when he discovers what Wade did with his timey-wimey watch thingy.


End file.
